Do Not Swear at All (Matthew 5:33-37)

Do Not Swear at All

 

Matthew 5:33-37

 

There is an old Chinese saying “Gak-joo-goo-geom (刻舟求劍).” A man was crossing the river on a boat, and on the way, he dropped his sword into the river. In order to find his sword, he wanted to mark the spot where the sword fell down. Then he marked the spot on the boat. As a matter of course, the boat keeps moving forward, getting far away from the spot where the sword sank. The mark that the man made on the boat is not valid as a mark to find his lost sword. One cannot mark a fixed point of place on a moving boat. It is a foolish act. The nature of our religious practice can be described in this way: It is finding “what we lost and where” and working toward the restoration of the lost. As time passes by, however, we become more distant from what and how we were at the beginning, and even lose our memory of it after all. This was how the Jews’ religion was. They forgot their God, and therefore, lost their God. Nevertheless, they boasted that they had the most “godly” religion in the world. They had many “marks,” namely, “teachings” for guiding a godly life, which they believed would lead them to God. But God says of them, “They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules” (Matthew 15:9). They chose “Judaism” rather than God. This religion was like a ship floating on the waves aimlessly. This ship was full of all kinds of good directions for sailing. They had teachings on purity, happiness, success, security, maintaining good relationships, overcoming stress and depression, and so on. But there was one thing they didn’t have. It was a compass. They didn’t look up the heaven. They just believed that their own religion, “the ship” they were on board was itself the compass directing them to God always and without mistakes. So they didn’t listen to Jesus, and didn’t listen to anybody.

 

In the second half of Matthew Chapter 5, Jesus is moving a number of important marks that have provided the standards for people’s godly life. They are teachings about murder (21-26), adultery (27-30), divorce (31-32), oaths (33-37), how to treat an evil person (38-42), and how to love enemies (43-47). Jesus introduces old teachings by saying, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago ……” Then, Jesus gives his disciples new teachings, which are much more beautiful and truthful. They are much more beautiful and truthful because they meet God’s will and reveal God’s love. All these new teachings are followed by Jesus’ conclusion. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect!” (48). This word can be regarded as the master direction that comprehends all the other teachings above. And the master standard of all these teachings is “the perfectness of our heavenly Father. The nature of our religion is remembering our heavenly Father’s perfectness, which we lost and forgot, and restoring it in us. Today’s text, which is Jesus’ teaching on making an oath, can also be approached in this context.

 

Let me read verses 33-34a. ““Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all.” In Leviticus 19:12 the Lord God says, “Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.” In addition, Deuteronomy 23:21a says, “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it,” and Ecclesiastes 5:5 says, “It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it.” These teachings in the Old Testaments don’t prohibit making an oath completely but, nevertheless, they are treating it very heavily and seriously. It is because making an oath is invoking God’s name and making a promise with God. But Jesus teaches his disciples, “Do not swear an oath at all.” The Lord says we should not swear either by heaven, or by the earth, or by Jerusalem, or by our head. Why does Jesus prohibit us from making an oath so completely? We can find the definition of “oath” in Hebrews 6:16, saying “People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.” According to this word, people make an oath in order to nail down the truthfulness of their arguments in the name of someone greater than them. For better effect of the oath, people often call a being with “divine authority” as their witness, but calling such a holy name is confirming that if the oath is broken, he would be punished to death by the divine witness. Simply saying, making an oath is taking God as his witness with giving his own life in pledge. Considering this meaning of swearing, we may understand a little why Jesus says, “Do not swear an oath at all.”

 

In the New Testaments of the Bible, we can see a number of stories that men swear oaths. One is Herod’s oath. In his birthday party, the daughter of Herodias danced, and her dancing pleased Herod and his diner guests greatly. Then the king promised her with an oath, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you. Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom” (Mark 6:22-23). He might have expected that this little girl would like to have a barbie doll or a latest-version iPad. Another swearing is what Peter, Jesus’ top disciple, made when he was denying his connection to the Lord. While Peter was sitting in the courtyard at the house of the high priest, where Jesus was being tried, a servant girl came to him and said, “You also were with Jesus of Galilee!” Surprised greatly, Peter denied it with an oath, “I don’t know the man” (Matthew 26:72). This is the same Peter who declared to the Lord a few hours ago, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you!” (Matthew 26:35). There is another oath in Acts 23. A group of Jews bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul (Acts 23:12). Interestingly, men’s oaths we find in the Bible are not beautiful at all. Their oaths are too thoughtless, too untruthful, or too wicked to be guaranteed by God’s name. Rather, they are blaspheming God through their swearing. Then, why do they make oaths? It is because they want to fix “I” at the center of the world. They want the world is circling around them. They want that even if they don’t turn to God, God may turn to them. They want that even if they are not truthful and faithful to God, God may be truthful and faithful to their causes. They want God to be a supporting actor to their stories of success and honor. Nevertheless, the consequences of their swearing are so miserable. The three cases of oaths mentioned above are all connected to “the death of the righteous.” Herod’s oath ended up with the death of John the Baptist. Peter’s oath neglected the death of Jesus his Lord. And the oath of the Jewish killers aimed directly at the life of St. Paul. After all, their oaths were not laying their own lives to pledge. Rather, with their oaths, they committed the crime of sacrificing the lives of the righteous for their sins. This is the nature of men’s oaths. I read in a commentary, “The worse men are, the less they are bound by oaths; the better they are, the less there is need for them.” This is quite true.

 

Not only men’s broken oaths, but also we can find “God’s oath” in the Bible. Hebrews 6:17-18 says, “Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged!” According to this word, God promised, and confirmed the promise with an oath. With this double ensuring (promise and oath), God ensures that he never changes (faithfulness) and he never lies (truthfulness). For this reason, God’s promise confirmed by His oath becomes our “hope.” In verse 6:19, this hope is called “a firm and secure anchor for the soul.” “The heirs of what was promised by God” is represented by Abraham. In Genesis 15, the Lord God said to Abraham, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. So shall be your offspring be” (5), and also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it” (7). God gave this promise to Abraham. But Abraham wanted “additional confirmation” of this promise. He asked God, “O Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” Then the Lord God performed a ceremony for making an oath and binding Himself to the oath. God had Abraham take sacrifice animals, cut each into halves, and arrange the halves opposite to each other. Then, God Himself passed between the halves of the sacrifice animals. In such a ceremony, both of the two parties of the covenant were supposed to pass between the halves, making the oath that any one of the two breaks the covenant, he would be cut in halves like the animals sacrificed for the ceremony. But in this ceremony, only God alone passed between the pieces. That is, God alone is making a one-way oath to keep His promise to Abraham and his heirs with God’s life in pledge. Hebrews 7:22 says that Jesus is “the guarantee of a better covenant.” In a sense, the first covenant failed not because of God’s unfaithfulness but because of the unfaithfulness of Israel. Still God, who bound Himself to the oath to Abraham, paid the price through the sacrifice of His Own Son. And then God made another oath for a better covenant, which was through the blood of the Son. How does Jesus become “the guarantee of a better covenant”? It is because He offered himself as a sacrifice and obtained eternal redemption for people’s sins once for all (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12). Moreover, it is because Jesus lives forever as the permanent High Priest and is able to save completely those who come to God through him as he always lives to intercede for them (Hebrews 7:24-25). God knows how much we people are weak, wicked, and changeable. It is quite risky to give them a promise and confirm the promise with an oath. If I were God, I would never do such a dangerous and foolish thing. But God does it. God does it even though He has to sacrifice His Own Son for those who were His enemies. Still, God promises and makes an oath for us. And this oath is guaranteed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This oath God made through the blood of Christ Jesus shows the true meaning of what an oath is. And this is too heavy, unbearable to us sinners with such weakness and wickedness.

 

In verse 37, Jesus says, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” When we sail the sea, we need a compass. Revolving around on the pivot, one end (N) of the needle of the compass points at the North Pole, and the other end (S) at the South Pole. Using the compass, therefore, the sailor can figure out which direction he is sailing. Jesus says to his disciples, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Figuratively saying, God’s perfectness is like the “North Star” toward which we are sailing day and night, and Jesus is like “the compass” given to us so that he points at God’s perfectness and we may follow him. And we should do our best to move forward to God’s perfectness as guided by Jesus Christ. St. Augustine says that this is the rightouesness of the believers. In his writing “On Men’s Perfection in Righteousness,” he says, “Our righteousness in this pilgrimage is this - that we press forward to that perfect and full righteousness in which there shall be perfect and full love in the sight of His glory.” This suggests that during this pilgrimage, we are not perfect in righteousness or full in love. We are only moving toward the hope, which was set by God’s promise and His oath in the blood of His Son. In this sense, we don’t have anything to confirm on earth about our faithfulness and truthfulness, which are still imperfect. If we make an oath, it is like marking a fixed spot on a moving boat. Every day, we look up God’s righteousness and follow Jesus’ guidance. The needle of the compass is valid only when it can move freely toward God’s Yes and God’s No as judged by Jesus Christ. The only true Oath is God’s Oath in Jesus. We are humbly and thankfully anchoring our lives to this firm and secure hope God promised us with His oath. I pray that, with God’s promise in Jesus Christ, our pilgrimage never stop, never be misled, and never slow down.